Where Flowers Used to Grow
by wrestlefan4
Summary: Pregnant with Harry & on a visit to her parents, Lily takes a walk & ends up at the old playground of her childhood, visiting the ghost of the black-eyed boy she loved. It was on this playground where he used to make the flowers grow.Lily/James,Lily/Snape


Pairings: Lily/James, Lily/Severus

Where Flowers Used to Grow

Lily shrugged the long coat over her shoulders, and buttoned it as well as she could. The bump of her belly had begun to show rapidly over the last few months, and the houndstooth coat that had accommodated her growing belly had finally been defeated. She left it undone, and tugged a hat down over her mane of fiery hair. Winter should have been coming to a close, but had insisted to stick around well into March. Today was the sort of day that looked bleak and apt to burst with snow, but would only in the end produce a few errant snowflakes that would drift lazily upon the crisp air, looking for reddened noses to brush and pinkened cheeks to kiss.

James was sitting in a cozy chair by the fireplace. Lily's father was in a matching one, the two of them sipping at steaming mugs of cocoa that Lily's mother had pushed into their hands. James had requested with a boyish smile, extra marshmallow cream atop his cocoa, and Lily's mother had been generous with the dolloping. Her mother was taken by James, who knew just how to charm. Her father liked him too. Lily glanced over at them, smiling a bit at the marshmallowy mustache above James upper lip. James licked it away, and raised one eyebrow.

"Where you off to, love?"

"Just going for a walk." She laid a hand over her belly. "The baby's being restless."

Lily left the men to themselves, and her mother in the kitchen. The weekend visit had been nice, but there were still too many things on her mind. The wizarding world was in turmoil, and the war was still raging on while she and James were on holiday. It had been James' idea to steal away for a visit, as he was concerned about the stress of it all upon his expectant wife and unborn child. She could tell beneath James' playful flirting with her mother, and trading stories with her father in front of the fireplace, James was eager to get back home and to The Order. In truth, the holiday had not unburdened Lily of the weight she felt on her shoulders so heavily at times. She had tried to write it off as an emotional side affect of the pregnancy, but that was not the truth. The truth was that such thoughts would find their way to her now and again even before she'd conceived. Now these feelings were simply made stronger and more painful by her hormones, she told herself.

And by coming here.

James did not know that the war and state of the wizarding world was not all that troubled her.

Lily shoved her hands into her coat pockets, and trudged along the walk, through her old neighborhood. The concrete slabs of sidewalk became more broken and weary as she neared the edge of her town where it began to give way to more unsavory areas. It was here where the small playground was where she had spent many days of her childhood, first with her sister, then with him, and then alone.

Her heart sped up, thudding heavier in her chest as she neared the abandon swing set. The tunnel slide was covered in graffiti with language and symbolism unfit for children. The gravel had become sparse and weedy, and the dead brown grasses whispered like phantoms against her coat. Her boots crunched gravel as she made her way towards the swings.

Lily's icy hands wrapped around the frozen chains, and she lowered herself onto the swing. The companion next to it, the one where he would have sat, was broken. The chains hung empty, there was no seat to it, and no familiar body to occupy it. Her green eyes welled with tears as she just sat there on her swing, staring at the limp chains—empty arms that had lost what they had once held.

Her tears fell hotly over her freckled cheeks, and the trails they left stung as the winter air dried them with harsh fingers. Through her tears she saw the ghost of a boy peering back at her from such dark eyes.

"S-Severus." She sobbed the name, squeezing her eyes closed and bowing her head away from him. The tears fell harder, clogging her throat with their thickness and weighing heavily upon her heart. She loved James, but she had first loved a troubled boy with indescribable dark eyes, and he had broken her heart—a heart that still loved him, in spite of it; a heart that still ached for his presence next to her on a broken swing.

She ran trembling fingers over her eyes, trying to swipe the tears away. They continued to fall anyway. Lily sniffed, and looked up and around the deserted playground. The ghost was still there, wandering around the weeds in mismatched clothing, his unwashed hair hanging in clotted strands down his neck and around his pale, gaunt, face. He stopped at a spot on the playground where he had used to make flowers grow for her—lilies that would sprout up white and pure as the first snow of winter. He knelt down and placed his small hands upon the hardened dirt, and up from amongst the litter and weeds, a beautiful flower rose up and unfurled its petals. He plucked the flower and looked up at her shyly, deciding on what to do.

At last the ghost stood up from its crouch, and shuffled towards her, uncertain of how she would receive him. He stopped a few feet away from her, still hesitant, and held the flower out towards her. Both of them looked upon the bud at once, and when his dark eyes saw what he had done to it, his face fell and a devastated expression twisted his features. The head of the lily lay against his palm—as white as his skin—the petals broken off and shriveling. A small sob caught in the boys throat, and when his eyes held hers again, she felt physical pain.

_"I'm so sorry."_ His voice was barely a whisper, and tears dripped slowly from the corners of his eyes and down his thin cheeks.

The chill wind of lingering winter picked up, and rushed one of the hurt petals out of his hand and away. The others soon followed, and then like the top of a sand dune being raced away by a cruel gust of desert wind, the boy was erased too. Lily sobbed, and reached out for him. Her fingertips barely brushed his just in time for them to be dashed away with the rest of him.

He was stolen away from her. As desperately as she had reached for him, she had not been able to tear him away from the dark forces that wanted to claim him. Had he not known that she loved him? Had her love not been enough? The long summer days together, dancing beneath the sun, cool grass beneath their feet, dreaming together and laughing—he once had laughed, they had both laughed together—just children twirling under the evening sky alight with fireflies. Not so very long ago they had floated on these swings, and the fresh spring kissed breeze had brushed the hair back from their faces. He had once made flowers grow up out of the rubbish, flowers just for her, but they had long since gone.

Thorns had snarled forth and their winding arms and coils of gnashing barbs had choked out the flowers. Upon the dark path he had chosen, lilies would grow no more.

Lily pushed herself up from the swing with a great effort. Her belly was heavy, but her heart even more so. She was not a woman who liked to wallow in pains of the past, but some bleak days would just not let be.

She missed him, and the way things used to be; the way things might have been.

When she arrived back into the house, she hung her coat upon the coat rack near the door. Before she could turn an arm had snaked around her middle. A hand that she felt with long, thin, fingers rested upon her belly and pressed lightly to feel the child within. Her breath hitched in her chest when the scent of him touched her. The lips that pressed to her neck were thin, and the nose that nuzzled briefly against her ear was hooked. Lily bit her lip, feeling her eyes well up again. She reached back to touch reality: her hand found a pair of glasses and then shaggy hair.

"Anything interesting on your walk, dearheart?" It was not the soft spoken voice she heard often when waking from dreams, and there was an overwhelming part of her that wished for it to be.

"No." Lily answered, her voice sounding hollow and unlike herself. She pulled away from James' encircling arms. "Just visiting some old haunts."

Lily drifted towards the fireplace, seeming haunted herself. She sat down in the chair James had occupied before, and closed her eyes trying to let the warmth of the flames in the hearth claim her body, which felt like an emptied shell. She heard the forlorn rattle of empty chains on an abandoned playground—the graveyard of childhood dreams—beneath the depressed shade of gray which was the clinging winter sky. A little girl wiped her jade colored eyes with the hem of her skirt, her ruby hair fell over her freckled and tear stained face.

She was trying so desperately to make the flowers grow.


End file.
